William I. Miller

William I. Miller joined the University of Michigan Law faculty in 1984.

Biography William I. Miller, the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law, has been a member of the Michigan Law School faculty since 1984. Originally, his research centered on saga Iceland, from whence the materials studied in his blood feuds class and his book, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland (1990). He has also written about emotions, mostly unpleasant ones involving self-assessment, and select vices and virtues. Thus his books: The Mystery of Courage (2000), The Anatomy of Disgust (1997), Humiliation (1993), and Faking It (2003), the last of which deals with anxieties of role, identity, and posturings of authenticity. The Anatomy of Disgust was named the best book of 1997 in anthropology/sociology by the Association of American Publishers. In Eye for an Eye (2006), he returns to matters of revenge and retribution in an extended treatment of the law of the talion. Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business (2008) is an extended treatment of a superbly crafted short Icelandic tale. Professor Miller earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and received both a Ph.D. in English and a J.D. from Yale. He has also been a visiting professor at Yale, the University of Chicago, the University of Bergen, the University of Tel Aviv, and Harvard, and in 2008 was the Carnegie Centenary Trust Professor at the University of St. Andrews.